


Republic

by Stephquiem



Series: Going Back [10]
Category: Animorphs (TV), Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Alternate Universe, Friendship, Gen, Self-Insert, Weddings, ride or die shorm, the proverbial calm before the (shit)storm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-18 11:55:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21560752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stephquiem/pseuds/Stephquiem
Summary: Sometimes, it's just about friendship.Takes place between #34The Prophecyand #38The Arrival,
Relationships: Erek King & Original Character(s)
Series: Going Back [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/988983
Comments: 9
Kudos: 8





	1. Shorm

Our trip to the Hork-Bajir home world left me with a lot of things to think about. I thought about the Hork-Bajir and their ruined planet--how without the Arn, there was no one to rebuild its manufactured ecosystem, how even if the Empire was completely dissolved somehow or they abandoned the planet, the Hork-Bajir left on Earth could never go home. I thought of Aldrea, the faded memory of her, restored briefly to a universe that had mostly moved on without her, the people she knew mostly gone, and the people she loved all long since passed. I thought about Seerow--poor, misguided Seerow, full of good intentions and terrible, fatal judgment of character, his mistakes still sending ripples across time and universes.

I thought, too, about another life, another universe, where I had friends who stopped here. They grew up and moved on, turned their attention to something else. Part of me wished I had the luxury of setting things down, taking a break, remembering what it felt like to _breathe._ Part of me--a large, loud part of me--wished I'd stopped here and moved on, too. Maybe someone else would be in my place, then. Someone more competent. Someone who was quicker to act and to figure things out. I always wished for some kind of direction, but maybe the directions were so obvious that someone else wouldn't need directions at all, I was just too stupid to work it out on my own. I certainly _felt_ stupid. And I felt, too, like the Hork-Bajir--my home was still out there, still intact, but the more time passed, the more I was starting to think I could never go home again, either.

When we got back and I'd returned home to the Kings', I asked Erek if he'd give me a haircut. I hadn't had one since before the Ellimist pulled me into this world and my hair was down past my shoulder blades. It also had the tendency to shed everywhere and I kept finding long, dark hairs all over the house. This had always been a thing, but somehow it was more embarrassing when I was the only person living there with real hair--except the dogs in the park downstairs. Not really a comparison I wanted. It was the kind of thing that was easier with Priton--not that it wasn't an issue, but it usually fell to him to take care of it. The kind of body maintenance you don't really think about because you do it on autopilot, and when it's someone else doing it for you, you think about it even less. Really, I was pretty sure the Chee hadn't said anything about it yet because they were nice. Still, I thought Erek looked a little relieved when I asked him for a haircut.

I washed my hair and put on my pajamas and wrapped a towel around my shoulders before heading downstairs again. It was late afternoon, an hour or two before I'd normally eat dinner, but I was tired and the pajamas were comfortable and flannel and reminded me of something I had back home except that these had pictures of dog bones on them. They'd been a pseudo-birthday present from the Chee--the ones I mostly saw in the dog park. I thought most of them still disapproved of getting involved in the war at all, but they still saw the sad, homeless teenager in their midst and wanted to be kind. It wasn't like home--my real home--but here for a little while I could feel like a part of the family.

I found Erek in the kitchen. While I showered, he'd set up a stool by the sink, laid towels out on the floor, and he'd laid out some tools--a pair of scissors, a comb, a clip Rachel had used in my hair when she helped me get ready for the dance. I was pretty sure that clip really _was_ Rachel's and that I'd been meant to give it back, but it was the only thing we had besides hair ties--and there was a neat pile of those, too. 

"I think I have a hair appointment with... Ee-reek?" I said, jokingly, in an imitation of what I thought an annoying salon customer would sound like.

Erek looked mildly amused. "Cute." He gestured at the stool. "Have a seat, Miss--" He used my last name, saying it slowly and purposefully wrong. 

It wasn't really funny, but everything had been so terribly serious lately, even bad jokes felt like a reprieve. At any rate, it made me smile as I slid onto the stool. I held my hand up to right around my collarbone, saying, "I want it to around here, I think."

"Curly or straight?"

"Oh. Right. Curly." 

Erek set to work with the comb and the scissors, and I tried not to move too much. It was quiet for several minutes, except for the snip of the scissors. We didn't really need conversation. I'd heard that the mark of any good relationship--friends, partners, family, whatever--was whether or not you could sit comfortably in silence with each other. Hard to gauge when you only get to talk to each other for a couple hours a week--at least without someone else's snarky commentary. It was one of the few things that was easier in these still new Priton-less days, and I appreciated it. I did. But then again, everything about my life felt too quiet now, and even comfortable silences made me antsy--at best--before too long.

I wasn't _trying_ to bring down the mood, honest.

"Erek? Are we friends?"

I felt Erek's hands still on my back before he made an exasperated little noise. "You live in my house and I am cutting your hair," he said, in that tone he used when he thought I was being especially obvious. "Yes, Steph, we're friends."

I tried--and failed--to bite back a smile. "You cut Catherine the Great's hair. And Rachel's."

"The first one was my _job_ , and the second one was so we could afford to hire Guide." Erek had gone back to cutting away at my hair again. "I'm doing _this_ because _you_ asked me to."

There was an odd warm feeling in my chest, making me smile wider. "You're not going to try to tell me you've never had guests over in five thousand years," I teased him. "You're more social than _that_."

"You're not a guest," Erek said. "You _live_ here. It's your home as much as it is mine." 

I wasn't trying to make things too serious. I really wasn't. But I'd also just had a long space flight back home to think about life and death and impermanence and there was still this suspiciously Priton-shaped hole that was trying to heal, and even if I'd meant for it to be a silly conversation to pass the time, you can't really blame me for wanting reassurance from _someone_.

"But I'm leaving," I said. "Not--not _soon_ , but you know, _soon enough."_

Erek stopped moving again, though at this point, he might have actually finished with my hair. I didn't move to check, or ask him. "Oh," he said after a moment. "I see what this is about."

I soldiered on, "And even if I wasn't, you're immortal. _I'm_ going to die someday. From the war or from disease or from a freak accident that's too quick for me to morph away the injuries." I resisted the urge to hug myself, realizing belatedly that this was the wrong road to go down. "It's not like I'm your first ever human friend."

"Hardly," Erek agreed.

"How do you _cope_?"

Erek didn't answer right away, but he made a thoughtful noise. "It depends on the friend," he said at last. "I can't forget any of them--and I don't think I'd want to. But because I don't forget anything, the bad memories don't overshadow the good ones. They're both just _there_."

I half-turned on the stool, squinting at him. "We don't all have infinite memories, Erek."

"Lucky you," Erek said. "You can focus on just the important bits, then. It's easier if you focus on those, or just on the special people."

"Special people?" I was almost facing backwards on the stool now, looking at Erek, who suddenly looked embarrassed. 

"Sure. Every lifetime's got a few. They're... you know. Like..." When I just stared blankly at him, Erek made a gesture with his hands that was probably meant to signify something, but came off more as embarrassed flailing. "You know what I mean."

I was, in fact, trying hard not to laugh now. "Aww, Erek, I think you're special, too."

Erek sighed. "Oh shut up." He set down the scissors on the kitchen counter, then turned back to me and made a shooing motion. "Go check in the mirror and see if you like your hair like this."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was at least partly inspired by my real life constant struggle with my hair. At least it comes back! Also a reminder to myself to cut my hair IRL. 
> 
> So, since I went to the trouble of writing a whole chapter devoted to it, we should probably talk about Erek and GB!Steph, huh.
> 
> I'm not sure when their plot started, but from a writing perspective, it makes a lot of sense that I decided to make them good friends, and have kept to that decision for the last nearly two decades. From a purely practical standpoint, their relationship is necessary to the plot. GB!Steph could not stay in Cassie's barn forever. She had to go somewhere. The place that made the most sense was the Kings'. Their friendship didn't evolve so much as spring fully formed into the world. Some of the details have changed over the years, but the crux of it all is pretty much the same as it was in, say, 2003. It also serves the function of giving GB!Steph a stabilizing force in her otherwise not-very-stable-at-all life.
> 
> My only struggles here, really, are that a) Erek is an immortal android. GB!Steph is very mortal and very much from another universe besides. And b) I'm a real person with real relationships and I'm here trying to ascribe a term that feels like it should be exclusive to the relationship of my fictionalized self. I've justified it with the following: a) The Chee were created to be companions to the very mortal Pemalites. You can't convince me that they don't care about humans, even if most aren't willing to involve themselves in the war effort. They're undeniably problematic, but it'd be weird if robots designed for friendship didn't make a single new friend in five millennia. B) There's really no better word for them than "shorm." Believe me, I've looked.


	2. Blending

"Where'd you get that?"

I turned around to see Marco, who was peering down at the drink in my hand. "The bar," I said. "Don't get excited, it's a shirley temple." The others had decided to join the dance floor, but I'd hung back. It wasn't quite as overwhelming as going to the dance with Erek had been, but there was still something uncomfortably claustrophobic about the press of bodies moving around me, too close for comfort. I felt much saner sitting down and watching from a distance.

It was a nice wedding. Not that I had much to compare it to--I'd only been to two that I could remember, when my parents each remarried, and to a stand-alone reception after my uncle eloped--but there was a lot of love and hope in the room, and there was something lovely and comforting about that. As long as I ignored the future or where I knew Eva was just then, anyway. You get real good at compartmentalizing and blocking things out sometimes, when you're me. Burying things down to be looked at later, when I couldn't be distracted by the thought of all the things I couldn't change. So I could stand in the receiving line with the others and smile at Peter and Nora when I was introduced as Marco's friend and try not to feel guilty.

There was a lot of feeling guilty those days--a lot of wishing afterwards that I didn't just stand by and let things happen. Like how it was hard sometimes to look at Tobias after the Anti-Morphing Ray stuff. In hindsight, I don't know that there was anything I could have done differently. I didn't know if the AMR actually worked, and we couldn't chance that it would. Later, I'd wish we'd had the time to burn all of the Yeerks' research on it to the ground.

There's always time for regrets in hindsight.

Marco flopped into one of the chairs next to me, apparently watching the dancers on the floor while I watched him. There's something strange, I think, about seeing people all dressed up when you're used to only ever seeing them dressed casually. Or less-than-casually--there was a good chance i saw my friends in bike shorts and leotards more than anything else. It's funny how a dress or a suit makes you look almost like a totally new person.

With feigned casualness, Marco glanced over at me. "No need to stare, Steph."

I snorted. He _did_ look handsome--really, I thought anyone did in a tuxedo--but I was definitely not going to say so. "Don't flatter yourself, Marco." He shrugged and turned back to look at the dance floor. I took a long sip from my drink, still considering his profile, before asking, "Can I give you some advice? One kid from a blended family to another?"

Marco looked skeptical, but he said, "Sure."

"Be nice to Nora." He started to say something--probably to protest that he was _trying_ to be nice, that this was him making the effort--but I cut him off. "I mean it. Do you know how hard it is to be step-parent? And most people don't have to worry about living in your mom's shadow. Eva's are big shoes for anyone to fill."

"I'm not going to treat her like she's my mom," Marco said, looking uncomfortable. "She's _not_."

"I know. I'm not saying you should. Just _be nice._ " I shrugged, trying to seem nonchalant. As always, I wasn't sure how much I succeeded. "At least I'm not telling you to be nice to the dog." Marco laughed at that. "I know where to to draw the line."

"I'll try," he said. Marco got up from his chair. "I need to move around. You wanna dance?"

"No, thanks." I looked past him, towards the buffet table, where a familiar shape was hovering and doing a poor job of looking subtle. "You know who you should dance with?" I couldn't help the secret, wry smile that came to my face. "Ax."

Marco startled, and I only had a second to wonder why before his expression smoothed over again and he laughed. 

"It'd probably distract him from the buffet table," I added, nodding in that direction.

Marco turned to follow my gesture. "Oh, shit." And then he was off, striding toward the food, calling out Ax's name. Ax, for his part, looked appropriately contrite--or he would have, if there wasn't already a suspicious smear across his face.

I watched him go, and saw Marco pull Ax away from the buffet. They disappeared from view for a minute as other people passed in front of them, and when I saw them again, they were headed to the dance floor, Ax's face very nearly clean again. I leaned back in my chair, watching--not just them, but the room in general. I finished my drink. Thought about getting another, or getting something else, but didn't get up.

There's this fun little trick I've learned. Sometimes, if you just pretend to not be sad for long enough, you can get somewhere almost approaching happy. If you can just block out the past and the future--and the future that's so near you keep looking over your shoulder in anticipation, like maybe it's sneaking up behind you--you can smile and laugh and it almost feels real. And part of it _is_ real. But part of it's false, too, like feigning concern for things you know will turn out all right, but in this case it was feigning the opposite. Though, who knows. Maybe in this timeline there was time to save Nora, too. 

Maybe. Though, I think there might be something to be said about trying to be happy when you know you're going to be sad later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know, I've been calling Shirley Temples "kiddy cocktails" my whole life and didn't realize until I was planning this chapter that they're the same thing.
> 
> I think on my next Going Back rewrite, one of the things I'm going to change is that I'll have more time dedicated to interactions with individual Animorphs. I do have plans for that in _this_ particular iteration--a not-insignificant portion of Part 12 is going to be dedicated to that--but if I was going to do it again I'd have made that a bigger part of Going Back. Really, Going Back would work best as a full series rewrite. A lot of problems would be solved by expanding it, but also it would take me twice as long to write. Them's the trade offs, I guess. You can tell we're well into the series now, because I'm already thinking about how I'm going to rewrite it next time.
> 
> At any rate, it really is criminal that I haven't dedicated a chapter to Marco until now. Also the thought of referencing That One Dance Scene from the TV show popped in my head and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to do it since GB!Steph knows exactly what she's invoking here.


	3. Stories

One of the weirder developments that sprang up in that strange in-between period, between Priton's departure and the inevitable consequences of his actions, was that, somehow, and without really meaning to, I became friends with Aftran and Tom.

It was easier, I think, in general to talk to people who weren't the other Animorphs. With other people, there wasn't that odd feeling of knowing more about them than I should, more than they'd volunteered on their own. It was one thing to know about what would happen to them in the future, it was another thing entirely to have seen into their heads. I've been a Controller. I know how invasive _that_ can be.

I met Tom and Aftran outside the high school one afternoon when I was headed back from the library. They were holding a McDonald's bag and asked if I wanted to share.

"Why did you even order two burgers?" I asked. There was a park around the corner. We'd found a spot on a low stone wall to sit and split the bag between us. 

"I'm a growing boy," Tom said, punctuating this statement by stuffing a handful of french fries into his mouth. He was looking a lot better. There was still a marked and uncomfortable difference between when he was in control and when Aftran was, but the change was becoming gradually more subtle. One of these days, I thought it might be impossible to tell who was in control, just by looking. It was encouraging, to say the least. Right then, he was eyeing me with what I thought was probably skepticism, as I peeled back the bun on my burger and began delicately picking out the pickles. "Don't like them?"

"I love pickles," I said. "Just not on a burger." I held out the napkin I'd placed them in. "Want 'em?"

"Sure." 

We ate in silence for a few minutes, watching a group of little kids argue over the swings while their babysitter looked on. 

"You know," I said, conversationally, "it's weird that you guys swap just to eat."

"We don't do it _just_ to eat," Tom protested. "We do it off and on all day, depending on what we're doing. Or how tired one of us is." He nudged my side. "Just 'cause _you_ don't see it..."

"Right, right, sorry." I held up my hands in mock defeat.

Tom dipped one of his fries into a container of ketchup, angling his body away from me as he did so. The first time he'd done it, I'd made a face and he'd twitched with incredulity--"There's ketchup on your burger!"--somehow missing that ketchup on its own and ketchup mixed with mustard were two totally different beasts. "You're right, though" he said. "We do switch specifically for eating. Aftran doesn't like it as much."

I raised my eyebrows. "Really? Why not? I thought Yeerks liked feeding, outside the necessity for staying alive."

There was a pause. Something shifted in Tom's expression, and when his mouth opened again, it was obvious Tom wasn't speaking anymore. "We do. And the endorphin rush we get from our hosts when they eat is pretty nice, but it's different. I don't know how to explain it." Aftran waved her hand. "Humans make it weirdly emotional. You can't eat a turkey sandwich without getting warm fuzzies about memories of Thanksgiving dinners. It's like everything's emotions with you guys."

I snickered a little. "Sorry."

"It's not a _bad_ thing," Aftran said. "Well, not usually. Sometimes it's distracting. But mostly it's just how it is." She shrugged. "Way easier to let the human deal with all the weird human hormones. You guys know what you're doing with those."

"I've wondered, does food taste different from host to host?" I asked, thoughtful. "Like, if you were in my head, would you think ketchup was gross and be here, picking pickles off my burgers?"

"If I was in your head," Aftran said, "I'd pick off the pickles and whatever else you didn't want regardless, because you don't like them." Tom had long since finished his burger, so she crumpled up the wrapper and dropped it in the empty bag. "But yeah, kind of? I don't know. Tom's less picky than Karen was, but it's hard to describe. A lot of it's perception, I think, and what you're used to." She paused, made a thoughtful sound. "Some things are weird, though. Like, cilantro. Tasted fine to me when I was in Karen, but in Tom it tastes like soap."

"Wait, it's not supposed to?"

Aftran shrugged.

I finished my own burger, and we split the last of the fries. I thought Aftran and Tom would swap control again. Part of me was a little jealous, that they could do it with such apparent ease already. The other part of me felt like I was getting whiplash just observing them and wasn't sure I'd have liked the back and forth--at least not with this frequency.

Still, when they spoke again, it was Aftran who asked, "Can I ask you a question about where you come from?"

"Uh..." I threw her an uneasy glance. "I'd really rather you didn't."

"Not about any future stuff, I promise." She held up her hands, placating. "I've just been wondering, since that whole thing with those Andalites--"

I cringed a little. Estrid and Gonrod had been gone less than a week.

"--What people back where you're from think about us. Yeerks. Andalites."

I thought about it for a long moment before answering. I leaned forward, resting my arms on my legs. "It's complicated, I guess? And also, I don't know, kind of irrelevant, because it's so different for them. No matter how much you like or dislike a person or group in a story, it's never going to be comparable to how you'd feel about them if you were face-to-face with them. Like, I _thought_ Andalites were mostly jerks before. Then I met them." I smiled ruefully. "Now I _know_ they're mostly jerks."

Aftran snorted. "Big difference there."

"If it's any consolation," I said, "I think they tried to make things... you know. Balanced. Or as balanced as you can really get."

"Hmm." Aftran frowned. "No offense, but I'm not sure how I'd feel about entrusting public opinion of my species to a human." She glanced sideways at me. "Even a sympathetic human."

"None taken." I wasn't sure I'd feel differently under the circumstances. "I guess if nothing else, if we all get out of this alive, you could write your people's story. You know, so people don't just hear Andalite propaganda. Give them the good with the bad. And the in-between."

"Maybe," Aftran said, sounding like the idea hadn't occurred to her until just then. To be fair, the end of the war seemed like a distant pipe dream to pretty much everyone else except me. It was starting to feel uncomfortably close for me, and there was still so much time left to go. "Though I don't know that I'd be an eloquent enough writer. Don't really have the practice, and I don't know. There's that human adage about how you need to read a lot to be a good writer, or something, right?" She shrugged. "Haven't had much time or interest for that. Maybe when the war's over and there's less to worry about."

I nodded. "Maybe."

"Or maybe I'd find someone else to do it. Another Yeerk. I'd probably be in the best position to find someone who was right for that job." She shrugged. Then she glanced down at her watch, and groaned. "Ugh, we have to go. Promised the parents we'd do chores after school." 

We stood up, gathering up Tom's backpack and the books I'd gotten from the library, and we spent a couple minutes trying to locate the park's garbage cans before parting ways. Tom took back control again to say goodbye, and then I watched them head off, feeling oddly hopeful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This might be the first time I've made an effort to set something up that _wasn't_ going to be upsetting. Also I think Aftran probably has a very specific idea in mind, but no idea about how to make it happen.
> 
> This Part had two points: 1) Pacing! Mostly, not wanting a single, two-chapter Part as the only thing separating Major Story Beats. 2) Giving myself, as the writer, a mental break between aforementioned Major Story Beats. Also Friendship. Also the next time I need a break from the Main Story I should write an Aftran & Tom one-shot. This Note is partially here to remind me to do that.
> 
> Stay tuned next time for... some consequences, a reunion--but probably not the one you'd expect--and truly gratuitous overuse of the word "fuck."
> 
> If that last one isn't a hint, I don't know what is.


End file.
